“That was a dozen years ago,” I said, my voice shaking from my sudden anger. “If you care so much about me, why did you wait so long to contact me?”
He blinked at me, apparently confused at my change of tone. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, not really.”
“I’m an outlaw,” he said. “If the authorities had any inkling that I was in contact with you, they would have used you as a pawn, made your life miserable—”
“Miserable? What, you mean like being raised by people who act like you’re some bad debt they’re stuck paying off? You mean like having your powers come on without anyone around to tell you what they are or how to handle them, so when you inevitably set shit on fire, everyone thinks you’re some kind of sociopath who belongs in the nuthouse? That kind of miserable?”
“You have no idea how sorry I am that you had to go through that; I contacted Victoria as soon as I could to let her know what was happening—”
“You had Vicky call my stepfather?”
Shimmer spread his hands. “She was no Talent, Jessie; she had no way of knowing what was happening to you otherwise. You thought she just miraculously decided to call your stepfather the day before you were going to be committed to a mental institution?”
I rubbed the back of my neck with my flesh hand. “Yeah, I guess I kind of did.”
He shook his head, a half-smile playing on his lips. “For a girl who claims to despise Fate, you seem to accept tremendous coincidence without much question.”
His gentle joke rankled like mockery, and I felt my blood rise again. “So why am I graced with your fatherly attention now, after all these years of not knowing you even existed?”
“Again, isn’t it obvious? You’ve gotten yourself into so much trouble that my presence in your life can’t possibly make things any worse.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’ve studied Fate and probability and chaos magic more than any human alive, so … yes, I’m very sure. Before you got the attention of the Virtii, it was best you didn’t even know about me. But now that you’ve killed one of them—oh, and well done, by the way—it’s quite a different story. I’d like to continue to help you, if you’ll let me.”
“Wait just a minute,” I said, doing a little more mental math about his previous “help” and not liking the sum. I touched the scarred flesh beneath my stone eye. “This ocularis was your doing, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “I gave it a compulsion charm tuned to you and arranged for the Warlock to find it, yes.”
“You arranged for him to find it … when I was eleven.”
He blinked. “Yes, once I realized your mother was beyond my help, I did an extensive set of probability divinations to try to see where your life might take you. I picked up on Cooper Marron’s thread, and the opportunity arose to get the ocularis into his brother’s hands, so I took it. It seemed to be the most prudent course of action.”
“The most prudent course …” My voice failed for a moment. My face felt like you could cook an egg on it. The only way he could have thought that the ocularis would be any help to me was if he’d been pretty sure I was going to be seriously mangled and lose at least one eye. “You knew all that shit was going to happen from the beginning and you didn’t warn me?”
“There was only a forty percent chance—”
“How hard would it be to send me a note saying, ‘Oh, hi, don’t go calling the rainstorm tonight, there’s a forty percent chance you’ll lose your fucking eye!’ ”
“The threads were very complex, I couldn’t risk—”
“You couldn’t risk? You didn’t risk anything! Five people died that night, you jackass!” I screamed at the mirror. I yanked the glove off and shoved my flames at the glass. “I nearly died. Cooper nearly died. We nearly lost everything. You didn’t do shit!”
Hot tears were streaming down my face. “You’re as bad as that rat-bastard Jordan. Worse.”
“Jessie, I can explain—”
“Save it. Oblittero.” I yanked the pointer card out of the mirror’s frame and threw it down toward the fireplace. I didn’t look to see if it burned or not.
The mirror went back to reflecting my own furious, red-eyed face. The scaly scars around my left eye socket were livid, inhuman, the ocularis a cold cat’s eye faintly reflecting the